Appeal No. 1997-4441
Application 08/370,095
the extent that no weight is given to the limitation in the
patentability analysis.
The Examiner states that the length limitation is a
statement of intended use which does not differentiate the
claimed apparatus from a prior art apparatus satisfying the
structural limitations (EA6). We agree that the length
limitation is a statement of intended use in the apparatus
claims. However, since we find no motivation in Brook to
provide a checkweigher in Born, we do not reach the intended
use issue. As to method claims 7 and 9, the method operates
on the product and the Examiner has not provided any reasoning
why the claimed length limitation would have been obvious. We
think that one of ordinary skill in the checkweighing art had
sufficient knowledge to appreciate that a weigh pan length
equal to the product length is the minimum possible weigh pan
length because otherwise more than one product at a time might
be on the weigh pan. We further believe that one of ordinary
skill in the checkweighing art would have known that a weigh
pan length equal to the product length could be used in prior
art checkweighers because the effective product length ("pl")
is less than the weigh pan length ("wpl"), if one was willing
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